As digital media technology continues to advance and the cost of storage continues to decline, users increasingly record digital media on some form of personal digital recorder, which when used to record video may be referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR). A personal computer can implement the PVR, for example, consumers are increasingly recording television programs and broadcast movies on their personal computers. However, the PVR can be implemented with a device other than a personal computer. Further, instead of television programs and movies, the media to be recorded might include only audio, still pictures, etc.
In addition to the foregoing, consumer demand is increasing for portable media players, which can include devices dedicated to playing media, or multi-function devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), hand-held computers, and smart telephones. Because users desire to transfer their digital media from their personal computer to their portable media players there is a growing need for applications that effectively transfer digital media from source devices, such as personal computers, to target devices such as portable media players.
The portable media players typically have very limited storage in comparison to the PVR or personal computer. The portable media players also typically have slower processors and different screen sizes from the PVR. In order to adapt the digital media to be playable on the portable media player, the digital media typically needs to be altered by a process referred to as “transcoding.” Transcoding may include converting the digital media from one format to another (e.g., MP3 to WMA) so the digital media will play on the playback device, down-sampling the digital media to a lower bit rate to reduce the amount of storage space needed on the playback device, adapting the screen size associated with the digital media so video appears correctly on the playback device, etc. The transcoding process is typically performed on the personal computer (or PVR). However, it can still take a substantial amount of time to transcode hours of video. Thus, transcoding takes up valuable processing time on the personal computer. More significantly, if the digital media is not already transcoded when the user synchronizes the portable media player to the personal computer, the user's time is wasted.
Thus, the user may wish to play the digital media on more than one device. However, as the foregoing indicates, transferring the digital media to the portable media player presents problems.